


Isn't that just living ?

by Blablu



Series: Nile and her team [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Immortality, Late Night Conversations, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25634074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blablu/pseuds/Blablu
Summary: She’s been on this damn bench for at least two hours, listening first to every sad song she could think of, which didn’t help, and then to Booker’s voice (just as sad, but not very melodic). That did help a bit, but only in that she doesn’t want to scream at the sky until her vocal cords snaps anymore : she still can’t fool herself into thinking that Nile Freeman, loving sister and caring daughter, has a shot at a normal life.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Series: Nile and her team [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858156
Comments: 4
Kudos: 75





	Isn't that just living ?

**Author's Note:**

> This is set right after _Au Violon s'use l'archet_ , but can (I believe) be read separately.

Nile shoves the phone in her pocket to quell the brightness of the screen. The surrounding garden is brimming with perfumes – full of flowers with names she doesn’t know – and remarkably silent.  
A quiet night under distant stars, in the middle of nowhere.

She gets up, hesitates, sits down again. As long as she stays here, alone, she can pretend she’s still the woman from a few months ago. The one who hadn’t died, and never killed anyone.  
She’s kidding herself, of course. It won’t work. She’s been on this damn bench for at least two hours, listening first to every sad song she could think of, which didn’t help, and then to Booker’s voice (just as sad, but not very melodic). That did help a bit, but only in that she doesn’t want to scream at the sky until her vocal cords snap anymore. She’s not sure it’s even possible, but she was this close to trying : after all, they would have grown back. She does feel better, but she still can’t fool herself into thinking that Nile Freeman, loving sister and caring daughter, has a shot at a normal life.

So, she gets up again, for good this time. She makes her way between shrubberies, passes the edges of a pond, the shadow of an ornamental well… it’s all so quaint, you’d never guess there’s an entire armory and three mass killers sleeping a few feet from here (but maybe young, ex-military immortals in glass houses shouldn’t cast the first stone).  
She pulls the safe house’s door as softly as she can because it opens on the living room where Andy is sleeping – as one does, Nile supposes, when one is a warrior from the dawn of mankind – in an old armchair with her labrys across her lap and both hands around the haft. 

Nile is closing the door just as carefully when the room lights up. Fuck.

"So", drawls Andy behind her. "How is he ?"

She’s still in the armchair, but fully awake. The labrys is down on the coffee table, and that’s not a bad sign, but Nicky and Joe are here too.  


Rather bad sign.

"I made you hot chocolate" announces Nicky, his finger still on the light switch. Nile watches him walk into the kitchen.

"Okay", she deadpans. "Is this an intervention ?"

Joe shifts on the couch. "That depends, Nile", he says with frankly perfidious sweetness. "Do you think you need an intervention ?" 

Normally she sits on the hassock, her back against the couch, in optimal reach of the coffee table. But she’s not going to let them tower over her, when they already have the moral high-ground. She crosses the small room with broad strides, counting aloud on her fingers.

"One. I am an adult and I can call whomever I want whenever I want, as long as it doesn’t compromise us – and it didn’t. Two. We didn’t need this little mise en scène" – _ooooooh_ mutters Andy under her breath, _fancy_ – "to have this conversation. And three."  
She turns, arms crossed, leaning against the fireplace. Joe’s eyes are crinkling with laughter. Andy’s barely hiding her smile. Okay. Good signs all around, actually.  
"Three, it’s late and I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed", she says as Nicky comes back with a steaming mug. "Thanks for the chocolate."

"Do you realize how badly things would have gotten, if you hadn’t been here ?" Andy hasn’t moved from her seat, hasn’t raised her voice. She’s speaking calmly, evenly, almost offhandedly, but it stops Nile in her tracks. Nicky picks it off from there :

"Andy would have died. Not with her head held high, not as a warrior : as a lab rat. And Joe and I, Booker too, would have been stuck there for God knows how long, watching each other die over and over again." 

This is not the night for this. Nile takes a deep breath :  
"I don’t. Need a lecture. We’ve already had that conversation. I know. I agree. I didn’t tell him where we were, I wasn’t trying to make him come back – it hasn’t even been half a year !"  
Another deep breath. Here goes nothing : "I called him because I needed to talk to someone who remembers what their family looked like." 

Joe whistles between his teeth. "Low blow", he says mildly. 

"I don’t know if you’ve noticed", snorts Andy, "but she’s like that sometimes." 

"Sorry. I’m not trying to make any of you feel bad, I’m just trying to explain." 

Nicky settles against Joe and pats the sofa, the mug still in his other hand. Niles relents, sits down next to them and takes a sip of chocolate. It’s delicious, of course. Nile focuses on that, on the heavy, comforting bitterness of it, for a moment.  
They’re all so relaxed around her, comfortably silent and attentive, that it grounds her a little. As their warmth does, as Booker’s words did. A little, but not enough. She still feels adrift, still feels lonely and uncertain, too young and weirdly old. She thought she was ready for this new existence, and she was wrong. Or not wrong, that's not true – she’s ready for some of it, clearly, she proved that – but a bit too optimistic.

"I want to see my brother and my mom", she says at least. "I want to see them, even if it hurts in the long run, even if they hate me in the end. I want what I can have. Booker told me not to do it, but he also told me to tell you about it – and that I had his number", she adds, loyally. "And I don’t know, maybe it’s selfish, but… isn’t it selfish either way ? And if being immortal means seeing the people you love die, I mean, isn’t that just living ?"

Joe whistles again.

"If you go back to them, you’ll have to leave sooner or later", Andy warns. Again. It’s like they don’t get that she gets it. "More sooner than later, in fact. And they think you’re dead."  
Well, she wasn’t exactly planning on showing up on her mom’s doorstep and then setting up camp in her childhood bedroom for the rest of her long life.  
"So you really shouldn’t make any hasty decision."  
She’ll need to find a way to… ease her mom into it. Her brother, too. Yes. She can find something.  
"And keep in mind that Book knew what he was talking about, and that we all think it’s a bad idea."

There’s a silent exchange of looks, that Nile pretends not to notice.

"But if you want to go ? We’ll be with you."

Andy says it like it’s the most obvious thing on earth, like there was never even the shadow of a doubt.  
Nile, sensing the tears coming back, blinks fast, nose in her mug, a lump in her throat. Maybe it will be fine. Maybe she’s ready, after all, if not quite in the way she thought she was.

"Thank you for the chocolate", she croaks.

Nicky handwaves it, the ghost of a smile playing on his face. Joe kisses him – not quite on the earlobe and not quite on the temple – and gets up.

"Off to bed, old man ?" 

"He is in his prime", corrects Nicky, serenely offended. 

Nile makes a show of rolling her eyes and turns to Andy. "Can I sleep on the couch, just tonight ?"

Andy laughs, "Hey, it’s your couch too", and there’s so much affection there that Nile’s not sure why she asked, so she just kicks off her sneakers and puts a cushion behind her head.

Nicky gets up too, turning off the lights with a quick "goodnight" before disappearing upstairs, towards their room. Joe follows him only to come back with a sheet he casually drapes over Nile. He makes to go, decides against it, decides against that decision, and leans over the back of the couch. 

"None of us see you as a child", he offers. 

"I do !" That’s Andy, the asshole, picking her axe up. 

"But we love him too", Joe continues. "We’ve loved him for two hundred years." 

"I know", Nile says. "I’ve never doubted that."

"Goodnight, Nile. Boss."

She listens to the stairs creaking lightly under his steps and to a quiet exchange in Arabic. She tries, but fails, to recognize any word. Tomorrow, maybe. Or the next day, or the day after that.  
In the armchair, almost close enough to touch, Andy is sitting in the dark, her old labrys across her lap. Nile, waiting for sleep, watches the faint outline of her silhouette. When she closes her eyes, she can still see it. Like it's been screen printed on her eyelids. 

_Finally_ , she thinks. _Anchored again._

**Author's Note:**

> I can't really call this a character study but in my head it is.
> 
> (sometimes you just need your friends to make you hot chocolate and just be their loving selves around you)


End file.
